LA DISCOGRAPHIE DU ROCK FRANÇAIS

PAR FRANCIS GROSSE ET BERNARD GUEFFIER

CONCLUSION

We hope you enjoyed this book and its aims and spirit. By issuing it, our purpose was to provide to the reader a "tool" to help him in his research, to guide him in the French productions labyrinth and to contribute to deepen his knowledge about yesterday and today French rock.

With this book, we also wanted to compensate for the lack of information and promotion from the musical press for the musical styles featuring in it. This press ignores these musics for commonplace money and fashion reasons.

This book intends to encourage you to be more curious, more open, more "active" than these magazines and to break the silence voluntarily kept by medias and records dealers who only keep in fashion. Your action must be to incite these intermediary people between you and the musicians to distribute, promote, to make hear these musics unless they disappear by lack of promotion and support; and we see that crazy situation which consists that you must order French records outside France or that French groups such as PULSAR or ASIA MINOR, which are references and mythical names abroad, are totally forgotten here.

An another aberration is to note that some records are subject to speculation, strong demand when the musicians who produced them can't publish what they compose today. So, turn on today's music, and don't discover a band ten years after it has disappeared. It'll only turn their record into one more collector item and won't bring anything to the group which didn't success to have its music listen during its living. If you want groups or musicians such as UPPSALA, EDHELS, PULSAR, MINIMUM VITAL, Joel DUGRENOT, ELOHIM, Jean-Luc CHEVALIER, NUANCE to record and go on producing records, you have to discover them right now, listen to them, speak about them.

Music is not dated: the fact of dating a music belongs rather to psychological or fashionable world than reality. The best proof is that there is a high demand and speculation on some no more available records which are much sought-after not only by this era's audience but also by a younger audience.

And this book is also a help for out of print records research and a source of documentation but it is not a price-guide for collectors and "rare" vynil dealers speculations.

A record only has the rarity and value that you give it and accept to pay; so we strongly warm our readers about speculative and totally prohibitive prices of some "specialists" who consider French rock as an interesting source of profit. You are the only ones who could stop their inflationist run by refusing to pay a record "which it will be even more expensive tomorrow".

The purpose of the out-of-print record reissue serie that we start with MADRIGAL is to break this inflationist practice on French records; that's why we are proud to see again in the stores records such as KOMINTERN, the first ZAO's album or UNIVERIA ZEKT.

If these reissues honour lately their authors which are often forgotten today or looking for a label for their present works, they maybe put in evidence French music quality and incite record companies to open to these musics and encourage the birth of new labels ready to devote to distribution and promotion of creative, original musics.

That's why the birth of a hew label in France, which produces these musics, is a very good news and we greet the birth of MUSEA whose vocation and aim are to help to promote the actual progressive musics, new musics, avant-garde and unclassifiable musics.

This book's purpose was to make an inventory of records issued between '69 and '85/86 in those styles but it couldn't count cassettes productions, firstly for a total lack of informations and the confidential aspect of these productions and secondly for a question of choice. Issuing a music on cassette is a new phenomenon which corresponds to record companies policy which limit their investments to fashionnable and commercial music and to the large amount of money necessary for a self-produced album. For these reasons, many groups and musicians chose to issue their music on cassette. However, if some of these productions on cassette present a certain musical interest, a music of quality, often they only consist in outlines of music, a "trace" on a tape of the musician or group's career.

Anyway it seemed interesting to quote at the end of this book some realisations on cassettes whose the quality and originality are worth hearing and to be drawn attention to the readers.

At this book's end you'll find addresses where you could buy certain records mentioned in this book and yet available now directly to the group's contact or to some record labels specialized in their distribution. Don't hesitate to write to these addresses to obtain these records because your record dealer often don't make this effort to help you.

We'll conclude by wishing that new quality productions will be nextly issue and that groups or musicians such as PULSAR, NUANCE or Joel DUGRENOT who all have record's projects and hopes could to release them and that their productions will be seriously diffused, with a minimum of promotion, of help by the medias (press, radio...) to give them a chance of success and to make hear correctly their music.

If it has been perfectly understood abroad, particularly in Japan, it's not the case in France where talented groups such as STEP AHEAD have suffered of this lack of promotion and efficient support by the medias, even if they were distributed by big record companies.

Last, we hope that French groups and musicians will have the means and tools to have their music listen to.

Finally, we planed regular additions (once a year) to this new edition and featuring the new productions from groups and musicians included in this book but also the records made by new line ups belonging to the musical styles mentioned in this inventory. And if necessary, forgotten records from groups in the fields of this book's musics. If you are interested by these additions, just write to:

and send 10 French Francs by check without no date and you'll receive them.

Although being a fan of French progressive, jazz-rock, new musics, I appreciate very much the same musics from the entire world and my musical curiosity is without limits (going from Finland, Brazil, Japan, Italy, Spain to Argentina, Sweden etc.). So, I wish to exchange records, informations with friends from the rest of the world and who share my tastes and curiosity. Any propositions to deepen my knowledges and to trade records from our respective countries will be welcome. If you're interested by this possibility, write to me at the MUSEA's address in indicating: for Francis GROSSE.

You can send to me your want list because I can find for you many of your wants and I hope that you could do the same for my own wants. Any suggestions are welcome.